By Skylar Smith
Daily Titan Staff Writer

One of the many benefits of being a student at any college is free access to the Internet, top-of-the-line programs and the space needed to complete student projects. Cal State Fullerton is no exception as it offers a very wide array of computers with an even larger number of programs to help students accomplish any goal a class requires.

Every college on campus has a unique set of computers available to help students achieve their goals, but the three most unique computer labs on campus belong to the college of the visual arts, computer science and communications.

The visual arts buildings on campus have several lab rooms, all of them containing similar, but not exactly the same applications and specs.

“It’s catered to what the classes use it for,” said Rodrigo Calderon a volunteer lab monitor. “I like them, they have pretty good computers that run at good speeds and have different programs … I make do with what’s available to me. I’m not a snob.”

Some of these different programs are Adobe InDesign, DreamWeaver, Photoshop, Final Cut Pro and several illustration programs.

However, the bad news is that the Visual Arts Labs are not technically labs thus not available to all students. “Basically, the labs in VA are not officially designated as computer labs,” said Ryder Smith the visual arts head lab technician, “They are for the use of Visual Arts students only and their use is part of the curriculum.”

“We are Mac based with excellent hardware and software, and I have kicked out entire comm. classes and individual students who attempt to use our equipment,” said Smith. “We have no word processing and many labs have no printing available, and so hold little interest outside the major in any case.”

One thing that many visual arts students complain about is the lack of an update to the Adobe Creative Suites in the labs as the communications building has the most recent version.

“I mean if anyone should have the CS4 suite I think it should be art majors’ cause they are the one who have to deal with industry standards as soon as they graduates,” said Rodrigo. “That makes sense to me; I would be for that. Where do I sign up?”

The College of Communications, located at the College Park building, contains several top-of-the-line Macs within its labs in the basement.

“Comm. has traditionally been one of the leaders on campus in terms of hardware and software upkeep,” said Michael Bedford, the instructional support technician and monitor of the Communication labs. “This is important because we especially need to have the latest software, or else students will bring data from home that might not be editable here.”

For a while the labs also had free printing. Since this became a well-known secret across campus, non-comm. majors began using it to print free of charge.

“Our three teaching labs and one open (unscheduled) lab are intended mainly for comm. students, and they use them quite heavily,” said Bedford, “We have switched to a TitanCard payment system for printing in our open lab, which has helped reduce non-departmental traffic.”

Another unique feature the communications computers have, is the ability to run a well known program called Boot Camp.

“Comm. is Intel Mac-based, with 20 inch white and silver iMacs capable of running Windows XP via Apple’s Boot Camp in two of our four labs (for those few software titles for which there is no Mac equivalent, such as EZ News).”

But for students who want to use Windows on a standard PC but can’t get an opening in the library during finals, there is another option: the College of Computer Science located in the CS building.
Both the first floor and second floor of the computer science building have computer labs that contain Windows Vista-based computers with all the latest computer science programs installed, and of course, the basics such as Word and Firefox. There is also a class room that doubles as a lab with Windows 7 on all the computers.

The CS building even has one lab on the second floor containing computers with Linux OS, a lesser-known operating system. That may not be a big deal to most people on campus but it is important to those in the computer science world.

Although most students may not find use for its computer science specific programs, the labs in the CS building are open to all majors.

“I did one time find a business student hanging out in the labs, but he was just there to hang out with students with other backgrounds,” said Hernan Manabat the operating systems analyst for the CS building. “The campus is welcome to use the labs here.”

Just like any school break, you can expect the computer techs to be working hard to make sure all software requirements are met for the upcoming semester.

“Hardware is updated frequently with the last refresh taking place last semester and another (possibly two) scheduled for this upcoming break,” said Smith.

“What I do during the break is find out what the newest software (is), and if the instructor and classes support newer textbooks and with new textbooks we need new software,” said Manabat.

“I have Apple’s new Snow Leopard operating system on hand and plan to upgrade to it for the spring, as well as install any new versions of any applications we use,” said Bedford. “Hardware upgrades will probably have to wait a year or two, but in terms of computers we’re in good shape for now.”